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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27088570">The Taste Of The Sun</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sinister_Kid/pseuds/Sinister_Kid'>Sinister_Kid</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Into The Light (Cole/Cullen Ficlets) [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dragon Age: Inquisition</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Cute Cole (Dragon Age), Developing Relationship, Feelings, First Kiss, M/M, POV Cole (Dragon Age), Pining, Relationship Discussions, Romantic Fluff, Romanticism, Wistful</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-09 02:54:17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,680</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27088570</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sinister_Kid/pseuds/Sinister_Kid</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Cole contemplates kissing the Commander.</p><p>His friends contemplate his <em>reasons.</em></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Cole/Cullen Rutherford</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Into The Light (Cole/Cullen Ficlets) [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1970680</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Taste Of The Sun</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Cole smiled under the sunlight in the garden, closing his eyes and seeing gold behind his eyelids when he did so, his body warm and comforted, as he sat the table under the gazebo where Cullen sometimes played chess. The Commander himself was absent from Skyhold, left to travel to Val Royeaux, and though he desperately wished to go with him, Cole was needed there at the castle. Promises of helping to keep. He clutched a note, on it words written by Cullen.</p><p>
  <em>Cole,</em>
  <br/>
  <em>I’m leaving for Val Royeaux.</em>
  <br/>
  <em>I won’t forget what we talked about.</em>
  <br/>
  <em>–Cullen</em>
</p><p>It had been delivered to Cole in the tavern by a very confused messenger, with the aid of Krem, who pointed him in the right direction, as the runner had no idea where to find the boy named Cole in the maze of the tavern. The note made his face soften as he stared into nothingness, daydreaming. Cullen didn’t wish to leave Skyhold without telling Cole, and it <em>wasn’t</em> a goodbye. That was the best part. It was just an until-next-time, that meant he was thinking of him.</p><p>That he would <em>not</em> forget him.</p><p>He propped his chin on his hand and stared at the plants, eyes not really seeing <em>them</em>, but instead a golden haired warrior. <em>Safe and secure, needed and wanted again</em>…He hid the feelings Cullen had written down beneath his pillow and looked at them often, reading them over and over, wearing them like a necklace, as he treasured each one. And now he dreamed in the sunlight, thinking of the moment he’d see the real Cullen again, and hold him once more.</p><p>He laughed softly, thinking of what Cullen had said to make him laugh the first time in his office.<em> I didn’t know the hat ever came off,</em> he’d said. It had made Cole think of the night Cullen’s armor came off. He didn’t know that came off either. <em>Safe and secure with it on. No demons can hurt him. But now it’s me that makes him feel safe</em>. But it did come off, when he lost all his clothes in a game of Wicked Grace with the Herald and her friends. He ran off, naked as the day he was born.</p><p>Cole had blurted out what he’d been thinking about it too, and the memory made him smile fondly.</p><p><em>We’re the same</em>, he thought to himself. </p><p>They just didn’t always sound the same, that was all.</p><p>The armor came off again before he left, when he went to visit Cole in his room, in only his clothes, bringing the words he’d written. <em>Not needing it to see me, not needing to hide behind it like a wall.</em> Trusting, like the feelings on the paper. That made Cole happy too. He still remembered the feeling of embracing Cullen, pressing his nose into the Commander’s hair, smelling the solution he used to keep it tame. The smell of oiled leather. No scent of Lyrium. Broken free of the chains.</p><p>He felt like jumping up and dancing, learning to play an instrument and sing, or one of the millions of other ways people expressed these sorts of feelings like Cole felt after reading Cullen’s words and holding him in his arms. Like soaring. He’d never felt such a light inside himself as he had, reading how he still helped Cullen even though he wasn’t a spirit anymore, perhaps <em>better</em> now that he was human, soothing all the little aches just by being him, and being near. </p><p>How he made Cullen feel so many wonderful things. It made him want to pull Cullen close and never let him go. Warm and bright, heating up his insides, like the sunlight on his face. He wondered if Cullen would taste like it too. It was so much to feel that it made Cole’s stomach clench tightly, but not from hunger. Or…at least not food. But gave him this pleasant sort of ache. It would be lots and lots and lots of impatient waiting for Cullen to return.</p><p>But he had plenty of things to distract him when it was too much. Promises to keep. He’d promised Varric he’d take care of himself, bathe and eat, sleep when he was tired, which he did. And as he’d learned by talking to Cullen, he didn’t always have to hide to help, so he’d stopped by the infirmary <em>told</em> the healers he would help them. Promised to fetch herbs from the garden, which he was <em>supposed</em> to be doing <em>now</em>. He’d also promised Leliana honey.</p><p>But he didn’t need to hide that from her either, apparently. She found out somehow he slipped it in her wine, and while he was greatly disappointed in himself that he’d been found out, he was made to feel better about it when Leliana suggested that instead he bring her honey for her <em>tea</em>, and have some with her. So he’d promised to bring her honey, and after taking herbs to the infirmary, he snuck into the kitchen, swiped a jar, then took it to the top floor of the tower.</p><p>She’d become a friend now too. He sat and learned the art of having tea with someone, then drank his very first cup of honey lemon tea, which tasted like kindness. It was very nice. Like the Commander, Leliana only wore armor on the outside, and she wasn’t <em>made</em> of it. Inside she was much softer than she let the others see. He asked the Nightingale about the Warden, since he couldn’t hear her either unless she spoke. She lifted a brow at the question.</p><p>“I thought you already knew,” she said.</p><p>“Yes,” he nodded, holding his cup of warmth with both hands as he sat with his boots on the chair across from her. <em>This</em> desk minded if he sat on it, as she’d been sure to shoo him off, though smiling and pointing to the chair instead. “I know. I just wanted to hear <em>your</em> voice singing, not hers. But only what you <em>want</em> me to know. If…if you want to say? You don’t have to.” He sipped from his cup again, soothed by the flavor and feeling. Leliana kept that brow up.</p><p>“Oh. You just…want to talk. Suppose it can’t hurt, no?”</p><p>“No,” he echoed. “Wait! You meant…I mean yes. I’d like to. I-If you want.”</p><p>“Alright then.”</p><p>She ahemed, then told him about the Hero of Ferelden and the Fifth Blight.</p><p>She sounded nicer with Leliana’s songbird voice than she did in Cullen’s mind. Sounded more like a violin, swinging her sword long and wide to strike the strings and slay darkspawn. Brave. Very brave. She helped a lot of people. Cole just wished she’d wanted to help Cullen. He’d like her more if she had. But she hadn’t. Instead, she resented Templars because she had been a mage. </p><p>She never knew that Cullen was different than the rest. But it was her loss, and Cole’s gain, because if she’d loved him, Cullen would be writing notes to <em>her</em> and not him. Same with the Herald, though she didn’t discard Cullen like he meant nothing, and thought of him with the same fondness as her brother in Ostwick, like a friend, but what she ignored in favor of Blackwall, Cole couldn’t stop thinking about.</p><p>The taste of the sun with lion’s skin, and a lamb’s heart.</p><p>After tea with Leliana, he kept another promise, one he’d made to <em>himself</em>, that he would try again to help Sera prank someone. He didn’t like pranks, but <em>she</em> did, and if it was truly the only way to get her to like him better, he’d at least <em>try</em>. It just made him so anxious knowing she might hurt someone, or make them angry. One day it would get her injured back. Even if she only did it to distract others from all the ‘seriousness’, and distract herself from the not-nothing on the other side.</p><p>But later that evening Cole himself got distracted, again, like he did in the garden, lost in thought at the table by the fire in the Great Hall, on the chair across from Varric and Dorian, beside Solas, when he was supposed to be eating supper. Instead, the soup spoon was useless in his hand as he propped his chin in his other and stared, eyes unfocused, at nothing again, thinking. Imagining warm light shining through a window, and the face it illuminated.</p><p>The lovely golden lion currently hunting in Orlais.</p><p>“I had thought that with Cole being more human, all the lost expressions and vacant staring would finally cease,” said the glittering mage nearby, speaking to the others, but looking at Cole.</p><p>“Yeah, so did I,” Varric agreed, the stone clinking his silverware against his bowl as he propped his elbows on the table. Not so stone-like to Cole anymore though. He heard Varric the same way he did everyone else now. He sounded the same. Like the rest of the quiet.<em> Smiles at me and says, ‘Hey Kid, how are you doing?’</em> “Something bothering you there, Kid?” Varric asked him presently. Cole turned to glance at him. “You look a million miles away.”</p><p>“No, not <em>that</em> far,” Cole said, smirking. Only just on the other side of the keep, in Cullen’s room.</p><p>Solas frowned at him. “Is there something wrong, Cole?” he asked.</p><p>Cole grinned. “<em>Right</em>, actually. Split, cracked before, but not broken now. Whole. Yes, it feels <em>very</em> right.”</p><p>He continued his daydreaming, but was quickly disturbed again by, “<em>What</em> feels right, Cole?”</p><p>“The sun. I wonder if it tastes like starlight,” he said dreamily.</p><p>He hadn’t really thought about how that would sound to anyone else, or if it would even make sense to the others at the table, he’d just blurted it out, but he heard, “Cole…are you <em>certain</em> you’re alright?”</p><p>“I’m half left, actually,” he quipped, remembering Varric’s joke, and across the table he heard the dwarf snort at his attempt to execute it in conversation. </p><p>“Did you teach him that?” Dorian mumbled to Varric.</p><p>“Cole, may I speak to you privately?” Solas asked.</p><p><em>Now</em> he wanted to speak to Cole? When he <em>wasn’t</em> bothered by something and didn’t <em>need</em> to be spoken to? When everything felt <em>right</em> in Cole’s mind? That made no sense. But maybe it was because he thought something had been wrong before that he didn’t wish to speak to Cole. He couldn’t know until they talked, so he got up from the table and followed Solas into the rotunda, joining him near the table on the first floor, wearing its blanket of sketches and charcoal.</p><p>“Cole, you’ve been acting very strange the last few days,” Solas remarked, wearing the concerned face, resting one hand on the table. Cole felt himself starting to roll his eyes a little. “Please take me seriously, Cole. This is not like you. You usually sound very different than you did just now, in the dining hall. This is not typical behavior. I know you’ve lost much of your spiritual nature, but I had thought at least <em>some</em> of the original Cole had remained.”</p><p>Ah yes the miserable Cole that struggled to cope as a spirit <em>not</em> in the Fade.</p><p>It was Cole’s turn to frown, hands slowly curling into fists at his sides. “He never <em>went</em> anywhere,” he huffed at Solas. “I’m still <em>me</em>. You worried I would ‘change’ too much if I stopped being a spirit, and I <em>have</em> changed but <em>not like that</em>. I’m different, yes, but not <em>that</em> kind of different. I still want to help. I don’t want to hurt anyone that doesn’t need it. I’m still all of those things that make me, well, <em>me</em>. I just…feel <em>new</em> things now. Am I not allowed to learn them?” </p><p>Solas sighed. “I’m just wondering if those new things you’re experiencing are really a benefit to you. You mentioned being curious as to what the <em>sun</em> tasted like?”</p><p>Cole relaxed a little. He looked away from Solas, eyes on the papers scattered about. Then he chuckled at himself. “I think about it <em>too much.</em> All the time, and it makes me forget what I’m meant to be doing but…I like it.”</p><p>“What is your ‘sun’ in this analogy, Cole? Or…would it be more accurate to ask <em>who</em>?”</p><p>“I’m not certain he wants anyone to know,” Cole answered. </p><p>“<em>He</em>?”</p><p>“Yes. Him. I like him. He likes me too. It’s bright, but its new, the wax still dripping on the floor, and it might blow out too quickly if not kept away from the wind. He’s…not ready to let them see the light. Not ready for anyone to know. Not when <em>we</em> don’t even know what we are yet. So I don’t want that either. <em>Yet</em>. Please understand.”</p><p>“I see.”</p><p>“<em>Do</em> you?”</p><p>Solas stared for a moment, so Cole stared right back, blue eyes darting over the elf’s face. Two brick walls of silence, both hiding questions. <em>Not so different now</em>, he thought. <em>Solas isn’t the only one with secrets anymore. I have one of my own.</em> “Cole, you’re still very new to the world, and you’ve yet to experience a lot of what it means to be mortal, and I fear you don’t have a solid grasp on the situation you’ve gotten yourself into–”</p><p>“No one can hold anything if they haven’t so much as reached for it yet,” Cole interrupted. “There’s nothing to worry about. Nothing’s <em>happened</em> yet.”</p><p>Solas pinched his lips. “This person has you <em>lying</em> to others about what’s taking place between you.”</p><p>“I’m <em>not</em> lying,” Cole corrected. “I’m only not telling you what you want to hear. They’re <em>not</em> the same.”</p><p>“They’re <em>both</em> withholding information, and therefore it’s still a form of deceit.”</p><p>Cole’s nostrils flared.</p><p>“I don’t want him to be <em>hurt</em>.”</p><p>“I want the same for you,” Solas pressed. “Cole?”</p><p>Cole was already turning away from him. <em>Would that I could make him forget</em>. But he’d probably only ask a second time. “New, yes, but <em>not</em> a child, Solas. Thank you for caring though. I’m glad you still do. So do I.” He left the rotunda and headed back out to the dining hall, only now he couldn’t even think of anything, much less eating, except for the concern in Solas’ questions. Concern for Cole, but it didn’t ring with the same caring as someone like Cullen.</p><p><em>He doesn’t want me to be tainted. He wants me to stay the way I was. He doesn’t like that I’ve <span class="u">changed</span></em>.</p><p>Cole breezed past the inhabitants of the Great Hall and right out the front door, down the steps to the courtyard at breakneck speed. He couldn’t think of finishing his supper. Not when he felt something building inside him similar to when he was angry at the Templar that killed him–Cole, the <em>other</em> Cole–and all he wanted to do was slay him. Because he felt the mage’s pain as if it were his own. So much so that he’d screamed, ‘You killed me!’ He wanted to kill him back.</p><p>He didn’t want to hurt Solas though. But he <em>was</em> angry with him, it seemed. So he had to get away from everyone until the feeling passed. He marched with determination up to his room in the tavern and paced instead of acting on the urge to strangle the elf. He was just so…<em>mad</em>! Solas didn’t believe he knew what he was doing. Thought he didn’t understand. But he understood perfectly. So he paced and paced, waiting for the feeling that made him tremble to go away.</p><p>He hadn’t heard Dorian following him. But he had, and found Cole in his room, still pacing, still aggravated, clenching both fists as he paced back and forth, in his mind’s eye seeing that Templar and all the pain and guilt of wanting to kill him washing over him again. Mixed in like water to the flour were the thoughts of Solas treating him like a child. He didn’t used to make Cole feel that way. He always felt wise and sure, worth listening to, worth heeding.</p><p>Maybe he’d just become too human to continue to listen to Solas lecturing him like a spirit. Dorian watched him pace for a moment before the mage ahemed, as if Cole didn’t know he was in the room. “Flour and water, mixing and churning, but the dough is sour and tastes of regret,” he mumbled aloud, voicing his thoughts. “What do you want, Dorian?” he then asked, pausing in his pacing and facing the mage to judge his expression and its meaning.</p><p>“What was that all about?” Dorian asked instead of answering. “Earlier in the dining hall, and just now. Something has you upset. <em>Clearly</em>.”</p><p>“Wait. Not yet,” Cole said, still shaking. “Give me a moment.” Because he wasn’t ready to speak about that yet. Not until he could stop shaking and thinking of breaking something. He squeezed his eyes shut. Then took a deep breath. He let it out slow and that helped. “Better…Glass is breaking in my head. It hurts. I didn’t want to hurt you too. But I’m much better now, only I’m not really sure what to say about it.”</p><p>“What’s wrong, Cole?”</p><p>“Solas didn’t like what I told him,” he answered.</p><p>“Well I gathered that much but why? What was Solas so irritated with you for?”</p><p>“He’s mad because I’m crushing someone,” Cole said, then listened to it. No, that didn’t sound right at all. “No, that’s wrong. No one’s being hurt. It’s not that kind of crushing.”</p><p>“Ooh, you mean crushing <em>on</em> someone, yes?”</p><p>“Yes.” Cole met Dorian’s gaze again. Still healing from old hurt. The pain Bull offered distracted him from the pain his father had caused. It was a good pain. Like the ache that Cole felt when thinking of Cullen. Dorian would understand. Remembering such a thing made the anger finally slip from his shoulders and he relaxed them. “Cullen blushes when he looks at me, and when I look at him,” Cole sighed wistfully, smirking, “I see stars.”</p><p>“My word,” was Dorian’s response. He rubbed his chin, studying Cole. “I…I see. You and the Commander then. That’s what all this is about. Solas doesn’t approve, I take it?”</p><p>“He thinks I’m too <em>new</em> to understand,” Cole explained. “But he doesn’t hear what’s <em>inside</em>, only the words. Not the sound behind them.”</p><p>Dorian continued rubbing his chin, thoughtful. “All very interesting. But why are you upset, exactly? Why should you care what anyone else thinks?”</p><p>“Because no one <em>wants</em> me to feel this way<em>. ‘Not appropriate.’</em> But it’s what others feel, and I’m one of those others now too. I’m <em>human</em>.”</p><p>“Quite right, my friend,” Dorian agreed. “It’s perfectly normal for you to have such feelings for someone. But only of your own free will. Maybe the problem here is that everyone’s concerned it might not be for the right <em>reasons</em>. We’re your friends, Cole. We care about you. We’d hate to think you’re being influenced somehow. You know, coerced or manipulated. Misled perhaps. But forced to do anything you’re not truly comfortable with.”</p><p>Forced. Like being fit into a box that felt too tight, with no room to stretch. Suffocated. Smothered. Like mages had been forced into the Circles. The image of Cullen was momentarily replaced with that of the other Cole again for a moment, in his mind. In a cell, starving. Then it switched to Amell on the other side of a magical barrier, sneering at Cullen the Templar. Cole and Amell. Forced to bend until they broke, because they couldn’t say no. The Templars would threaten them. </p><p>All mages. Broken at the hands of Templar jailers. Forced into little boxes full of broken glass disguised as comfy beds.</p><p>“<em>No</em>,” Cole stressed, adamantly. “I’m not forced into anything I don’t fit. My legs can stretch.”</p><p>“I’m going to pretend I understand what that meant and just chalk it up as no, you’re not being made to do something you don’t actually want to do.”</p><p>“Yes. <em>That</em>. No one’s <em>making</em> me do anything, Dorian. I <em>want</em> to feel this way.” </p><p>“But do you even know what you want, or understand it?”</p><p>Cole sighed. </p><p>He was learning to.</p><p>“I want to be <em>held</em>, and I want to touch starlight. I want to know the taste of the sun. I <em>want</em> all those things. To know what they feel like. It’s <em>taking</em> that’s wrong. Taking like the Templars took without asking. But it’s not wrong to <em>want</em>.” Cole looked deeply into Dorian’s eyes for a moment, still remembering his pain. “It’s not wrong to want to touch them, Dorian. Halward was the one that was wrong. The Templars were wrong. Demons taking is wrong. But wanting to give is different.”</p><p>The more confident he became about how he felt, the more confidently Cole spoke as well, his words starting to come out right from his head.</p><p>“Cole, I don’t think–”</p><p>“Dorian, I <em>know</em>,” he stressed, reaching to cup his shoulders like he might shake him, only he didn’t. “And I <em>do</em> understand. And Cullen would not take anything from me that I’m not willing to give back. Couldn’t. He was never like that. He…<em>felt</em> things in the Circle, as a Templar. For a mage, named Amell. But felt guilty just for <em>thinking</em> about them. He would never act on them. He was not like the other Templars, and now he’s not even a Templar at all. He would never <em>force</em> me, Dorian.”</p><p>The mage worried his lip. “Are you absolutely certain Cullen even feels the same about you?”</p><p>“No, I’m not certain he wants the same things, but he doesn’t <em>not</em> want them. Only we haven’t talked about that yet. I haven’t asked. I plan to.”</p><p>Dorian sighed, “Alright then. I just wanted to be sure you understood what you’re getting yourself into. I suppose the two of you will figure out the rest for yourselves.” </p><p>“Thank you for caring,” Cole said. “I…wasn’t <em>sure</em> if you would, but you do.”</p><p>“Of course I do.” He turned to leave Cole’s room, but then glanced over his shoulder. “Oh but do me a favor though, will you? Don’t mention my father again.”</p><p>He wouldn’t. Dorian just needed to hear that as much as Cole needed to say it, that was all. The Iron Bull would fix what Cole couldn’t, so he needn’t worry. Dorian would forget all about Halward Pavus the moment he was Kadan again, and wrapped up in his Amatus, his thoughts among the stars. Words that shined like the night sky, left unsaid between them still. Instead they were spoken through touch and other comforts. Maybe one day they’d say them aloud.</p><p>Dorian had helped, without knowing. What he’d heard Cole say to him, Cole had heard himself say. He wanted Cullen and he knew precisely what he wanted from him. To learn. Learn how to touch and taste and feel. To say things without speaking, like Dorian did. So, a few days later, he tucked himself inside Cullen’s office on the day he knew the Commander would return. He knew because the Spymaster told him so, when he asked.</p><p>People walked in and out of Cullen’s office without him to protest, but sometimes they just needed to. Passing through, or dropping notes on the desk. Lots of them. Covering both ends. So Cole instead found himself perched on top the bookshelf nearby, swinging one leg off of it, holding his own stack of notes, but these were different. They were feelings he’d taken to writing in Cullen’s absence, late at night in his room when he couldn’t sleep. </p><p>Answers to unasked questions that poured onto the paper like water right out of Cole’s head as he thought of them. Cullen had written his, so Cole wondered if he could do the same, and if Cullen might like to read them. It wasn’t quite like writing messages to people though. These hadn’t been things he’d needed someone to know to help them. These were just…all the things inside <em>his</em> head. So it felt different writing them down. </p><p>Some of it was…painful. But pouring out those parts meant he could let them go if he wanted. Fairly soon he’d had a small mountain of them.</p><p>He thumbed through the pages, ink stains on his fingers, face too, little dots here and there. </p><p>Then the moment came that the former Templar he’d been missing came bursting through the door.</p><p>He was speaking to one of his officers that entered with him, as he was saying, “–And make sure you get this straight over to Josephine’s office. I don’t want any delays. The longer we wait, the worse the situation will get.”</p><p>“Yessir,” said the woman, accepting a scroll he handed to her, saluting, and then leaving the office again. And there he was, the Commander in all his glory, venturing over to the desk, massaging the back of his neck like it had a crick in it. Long journey, over many mountains and valleys to get there, and he was obviously tired. He had yet to notice Cole, and for a moment, it almost felt like it used to, when he could hide in the shadows and observe him.</p><p>Cole flicked one of the pages he clutched, and the small sound alerted Cullen to his presence, ears fine tuned to sense even the slightest change. Reflexively he’d placed a hand on the hilt of his blade, until it saw it was Cole sitting on the bookshelf, smiling at him, and not an attacker. He exhaled in relief, gaze softening. “Cole…Just the person I’d been hoping to see,” he said, returning Cole’s smile with one in kind and it only made Cole’s widen.</p><p>He lost all thought of the papers he held, and so they went flying everywhere when he jumped down from the bookshelf and started toward Cullen. Falling all around them as he happily let Cullen pull him into a squeezing hug. Though it pinched, unlike the last time they did this.</p><p>“Armor isn’t good for holding,” Cole huffed. “I’m glad it comes off at some point.”</p><p>Cullen chuckled.</p><p>“Not often enough, I’m sure,” he commented, then then broke apart just enough to stare at one another. Cole didn’t mind when <em>Cullen</em> did it, when <em>Cullen’s</em> eyes were focused on him, because what he saw in them shined like the sun. Their faces were so close, <em>they</em> were so close, and for just a split second, Cole <em>heard</em> something again. A faint glimmer of a feeling, as Cullen’s eyes traveled to his mouth, and he bit his lip. He felt an <em>ache</em> of some kind, in Cullen.</p><p>And he was quite certain he knew what the Commander needed.</p><p>He needed it too.</p><p>So slowly, softly, he pressed his lips to Cullen’s, not knowing the technique, but feeling the burn inside Cullen start to intensify for a moment. It <em>did</em> taste like the sun. Hot and blinding and gold behind his eyelids. The Commander was so warm and it felt like sinking in sand. It was so blissful that he didn’t wish to ever leave that spot, letting out a small, “Hmnh,” against Cullen’s mouth. But then Cullen pulled away. </p><p>“Cole? Why did you do that?”</p><p>“I wanted to know what you tasted like,” he said, eyes heavy lidded. “You taste like the sun.”</p><p>“Who, uh,” Some throat clearing, “Who told you to do that?”</p><p>“I told me,” he said. “I <em>wanted</em> to. And you wanted me to…You did want me to, yes? Or was that wrong? I-I didn’t–I forgot to <em>ask</em>–”</p><p>“It’s alright, Cole,” Cullen assured, gloved hands rubbing his back. “I just didn’t know what provoked it, that’s all…We should talk about this. Do a <em>lot</em> of talking about this, probably. Figure out what this means.”</p><p>“Yes,” Cole smiled. “We will. I'd like to. Very much…Cullen?”</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>“I missed you.”</p><p>Cullen smiled again.</p><p>“And I, you.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>You don't feel shame if you have consent.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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